Ivonne Thein's ‘Thirty-Two Kilos' Exhibit is Scary & Educative

German photographer Ivonne Thein’s photo exhibit is a veritable little shop of horrors. The women in this gallery are horribly emaciated, contorted, their bones are jutting out and their ravaged, sick bodies are wrapped in medical bandages.

The good news about Ivonne Thein’s "Thirty-Two Kilos" anorexia awareness exhibit is that these images are digitally manipulated. The bad news is that the disease continues to run rampant in the fashion industry and in society as a whole.

Thein conceived the art exhibit in response to the proliferation of pro-anorexia or pro-ana websites where the disease is promoted as a way of life and a viable alternative to weight loss.

The Washington Post notes, "In a twist that perhaps could have been anticipated, some of the pro-ana sites have embraced Thein’s work. On these sites, images of skeletal women provide ‘thinspiration.’ One pro-ana blogger posted Thein’s photos and received mixed comments:

‘Those pics are so, so beautiful! I want to look like them! They look so fragil [sic] and like an angel.’

‘I still think that some of the models have a big [rear]. How distorted am I?’